PLEASE BE SEATED… IT’S TIME FOR A GHOST STORY

In‘TIME FALLS LIKE SNOW’ – book two of the Y/A ‘Bede Trilogy’ by V Knox, Bede Hall, an indignant stately home riddled with time portals, is once again under siege from financial woes and local developers. But this time, it’s under attack by a newly-awakened supernatural enemy.

Enter a pair of equally demanding enchanted chairs with a mission of their own that engage resident teenage twins, Kit (Christopher) and Bash (Bathsheba), in an extraordinary partnership to overcome an ancient curse.

As the chosen champions foretold in a winter prophecy, the telepathic twins must set aside being normal teenagers and face the responsibilities of preventing a disastrous event that threatens the survival of Bede Hall as well as the future of the planet.

Bash, has always been a supercharged bossy boots ‘know it all’ – a wordsmith extraordinaire who loves to tease her serious brother for fun, but as Bede Hall’s designated ‘mistress of the green’ she’s charged with grounding the energies of the Hall’s gardens and woodlands, until the return of the Green Man restores the land.

But Kit, Bash’s budding scientist brother who, other than ghosts, denounces all things supernatural as optical illusions or hoaxes, believes he has a logical explanation of the bizarre events unfolding in Bede, and in spite of some unexplained events to the contrary, has no intentions of swallowing the hairbrained idea that the Hall orders its residents to do its bidding and controls the weather. Nor does he accept being appointed the designated time traveler to intercede for Bede Hall in the hope of reconciling long disputed interests in the distant past.

Together with a team of resident ghosts and sentient animals called the ‘Twinters’ and a village of decidedly odd residents known as the twice-borns, the twins agree to disagree.

The word existential delights wordsmith Bash, but even though the twins have always read each other’s minds, and Kit has logically reasoned out that ghosts are scientifically legitimate forms of purely organic residue, welcoming interfering sentient chairs as necessary allies is a challenge too difficult for him to digest. Even so, he’s beginning to accept he may have actually time- traveled during a dream-like vision of a wintry future, an admission he’s keeping to himself.

Kit and Bash Stratford-Smyth have never needed extraneous devices to hear each others thoughts, but time is a dimension too deep for telepathy to connect. They liken ‘chair chat’ to a childhood game using a pair of tin cans on a length of string as a playful telephone.

Their opposing approach to enchanted chairs is distinctive – a simple science experiment for Kit to disprove, and confirmation of supernatural extrasensory hearing for Bash. But one way or another, they must set their differences aside for the sake of the future and comply with a new set of rules.

One thing remains obvious, once separated by three-thousand-five-hundred-years and two-thousand-seven-hundred-miles as the falcon Horus flies, thoughts shared across time bring a whole new meaning to let’s sit down and have a chat.

In the meantime, pull up a chair and read closely, secrets are about to be spilled as Bede Hall’s prickly personality continues to dominate a landscape that’s decidedly ancestral.

The ‘Green Man’, is a mythological figure depicted with leaves for hair, in the tradition of the god Pan, protector of woodlands and defender of natural green spaces. He is usually green or autumn colors, depending on the season. But when the Green Man is absent from the countryside, vegetation atrophies, legend declares a permanent winter settles over the landscape, and the world hovers in a state of frozen decay.

THE BEDE TIME-SLIP TRILOGY

Winter looms big in the ‘Bede Trilogy’ set in a liminal landscape where reality meets enchantment and a sentient stately home presides over an area of Great Britain linked irreversibly with Pangea and ancient Egypt. Ghosts, time-travel, a dozen terrible secrets, and a curse of snow takes a pair of telepathic twins on an adventure in ancient Egypt and into the future where the safety of earth’s ecosystem lies in their hands.

Twins Christopher (Kit) and Bathsheba (Bash) Stratford-Smyth who live in a suburb near London, are twelve when their Egyptologist father goes missing from his dig in Egypt.

Meanwhile, Bede Hall, their grandmother, Lady Nan’s stately home in Northumbria, is in danger and not a little angry. It feels cruelly abandoned at its hour of need, put up for sale while its matriarch, oblivious of her old home in danger of being sold to shady developers, has intentionally distanced herself from exhaustive responsibilities by retreating into a fog of happier memories.

While the Hall faces being turned it into a commercial venture, or demolition, Lady Nan dreams on about a previous life she remembers in ancient Egypt.

But the Hall has no intentions of being sold without a fight. In desperation, it summons its considerable powers and orders Lady Nan to wake up and return home.

Share this:

Like this:

LikeLoading...

Related

About Veronica Knox

Veronica Knox has a Fine Arts Degree from the University of Alberta, where she studied Art History, Classical Studies, and Painting. In her career as a graphic designer, illustrator, private art teacher, and ‘fine artist,’ she has also worked with the brain-injured and autistic, developing new theories of hand-to-eye-to-mind connection.
Veronica lives on the west coast of Canada, supporting local animal rescue shelters, painting, writing, editing other author’s novels, and championing the conservation of tigers and elephants, and their habitats.
Her artwork and visuals to support ‘Second Lisa’ may be viewed on her website - www.veronicaknox.com